Let's be clear here: I was a vigilant anti-smoker as a kid. Who wasn't? I used to break apart my grandmother's matinee's and flush them down the toilet.

Cigarettes were smoked by bad kids in motorcylcle jackets or grown ups, you know the kind: With novelty nut crackers on their coffee tables and white leather furniture that reclined. Some of them only smoked white-filter cigarettes and they actually used the push lighters and groaning ashtrays in their cars. They smelled like stale smoke and perfume or cologne. They had husky laughs and lips like Auden.

Someone said WH Auden had a face like wet wedding cake:

"The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me." -WHA